An Aqueous Territory
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AC KNOW LEDG MENTS Writing about border crossers and the transimperial milieu they inhabited re- quires lots of international travel. Like Antonio Machado’s (and Joan Manuel Serrat’s) caminante, I have walked along many roads in the pro cess of writing this book. And while I have not sailed a hundred seas, researching the lives of many who actually did has taken me to multiple archives and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. In the pro cess I have acquired many debts, met lots of wonderful people, and turned several libraries into my personal oﬃce. Cornell University and the University of California, Irvine (uci), the two institutions that I consider my academic homes, provided most of the finan- cial support that made this book pos si ble. Funds from Cornell’s History De- partment and the Society for the Humanities covered a postdissertation trip to Colombia’s National Archives in 2013. Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sci- ences gave me the physical space and time I needed to finish the revision pro cess. Grants and fellowships from uci’s Humanities Center, the School of Humanities, the Center in Law, Society and Culture, and the All- uc Group in Economic History allowed me to conduct archival research in Colombia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. A residency scholarship from the Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos made research in Seville’s Archivo General de Indias (agi) pos si ble. Archival research cannot be conducted without those who retrieve the documents from their hidden underground repositories. The staﬀ of London’s National Archives and the friendly and collaborative employees of Seville’s agi provided invaluable help. In Colombia’s Archivo General de la Nación, I benefited from the expertise of research room director Mauricio Tovar and the whole staﬀ. I am particularly grateful to Ana López, Fabio Castro, Rovir Gómez, Anhjy Meneses, Zenaida López, Fredy Duque, Enrique Rodríguez, and Doris Contreras for guiding me when I had little idea of how to find what I was looking for. My intellectual debts are many. Since 2012, I have been part of a superb academic community where I have found many friends and even more critical